Featured, You Didn't Write That: News

This takes the cake: A Winner D’Eclaired

Posted on by Thornton Sully
25
Oct


Literati!

Let it be said that the editor-in-chief (fur immer moi) is courageous.  Although I reserve the right to retroactively change my mind, at this moment my etch is sketched, and I have determined a winner for our contest You Didn’t Write That.

The cowardly way, would of course, have been to assign the judging to someone else.  However, as this is the first contest since our official re-booty, I thought some juevos were in order, and I am making the call.

So this very subjective determination is really an expression of my own prejudices and values,some  which I hope to share and even impart upon those who visit this site. All the finalist entries are superb, and for different reasons.

I am sure that everyone’s emotional favorite is Miryam Meier-Howard’s recreation of the scene in which she learned of her son’s death. Good fiction creates catharsis, and although Miryam’s telling was not fictionalized, it never-the-less created a moment of healing shared by the author, which could not have been achieved with mere recitation of the facts, but only by skilled cadence and sensitivity. Miryam made us, let us, feel something, and something very personal.  When I read,  it is not to think, but to feel.  I believe it was Frances Bacon who said “The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

Next finalist is Ashley Johnson, who was able to create a story with a beginning, a middle and an end in her two hundred words. Ashley has been inactive as a writer, but the addiction was fanned by reading the other entries and we can only hope she does not find the cure.  Welcome aboard, Ashley, and I assure all of you that she is NOT the Ashley in Theresa Ann’s ongoing stage play “Let’s Make a Scene”  (I am getting an awful lot of fun reading her play, by the way.  Witty, well crafted, and itself very addicting.  I do hope that as you read the contest entries you will become a fan of Theresa Ann and will leave her a few comments.)

Mac Eagan is a perpetual contender, meaning he has a great editor in Mari, his daughter.  He creates unique characters and settings.  Who wooda thunk of a story about a tagger? Mac consistently makes fiction seem like reality, and he does it with convincing dialogue and characterizations.  His plots are always one-of-a-kind, and I suspect that Mac will sooner rather than later become published for an anthology of his short stories.

Tisha Deutsch is a woman after my own heart. As many of you know, I raised my three kids on my own, and to write meant having to get up at four in the morning, because at six it was all over as I got the kids ready for school and me for the day job.  Tisha is not a single parent, but she has maximized the load by adopting children, as if the demands of two are not enough.  Never-the-less, she found time to be reflective and to write, and her tale is something her daughter will come to appreciate as she gets older. It’s a sweet tale with a powerful punchline.  Read it again and you will see how Tisha has intuited her daughter’s spirit.  Empathy is a job requirement for all who would write.  Thanks Tisha.

There was of course, my own entry. I was bored and it was self indulgent but I’m the editor-in-chief so I’m aloud–oops!-allowed! But the truth of the matter is all of the finalists exceeded what I wrote by leaps and bounds.  Especially, our winner of You Didn’t Write That, Michael Stang.

If Mike were a painter, he would be Renoir. His words brush the page randomly, and only make sense when seen as the whole.  An impressionistic writer, phrases playing off themselves and an occasional line of brilliance like “tongue stuck on stupid”.  Mike reminds us that language is really a translation of what is wordless, but while most of us try to succeed by accurately translating experience, thought, and feeling into words, Mike translates what is more abstract, the human spirit.  We get an impression of a young man struggling, scraping the walls of his brain for some understanding of a hostile world, and trying to make it more manageable. Also consistent in Mike’s writing is a sense of humility, which can only feel authentic when written by one whom life has humbled, and by more than a casual encounter.

I love a good story, an imaginative use of words, and a few brilliant lines that make me see what the author wants me to see.  Gottem all in Mike’s winning entry “Liar”.  Always a bridesmaid, finally a bride.

Bride of FarnkenStang

And so Michael Stang is our winner, and with that comes the burden of judging the next contest, which I will announce in a few days. Mike will have a surprise trophy coming in the mail, which I hope he will photograph and sent back for us to put on line.

Next contest announcement in a few days…

Cheers!

thorn

going-down-to-the-beach-now-in-chief

 

Thornton Sully

Thorn founded A Word with You Press in 2009, having Jack-Londoned his way across the globe sleeping with whatever country would have him, picking up stray stories along with way. A litter of dog-eared passports that have taken up residence in his sock drawer are a constant temptation, but, having at last discovered paradise, it’s not likely he will stray too far from his adopted city of Prague. He has helped hundreds of writers reach their potential, including best-selling authors and award winners. He is the author of Fire in the Belly: How to write your novel with Purpose and Passion, Almost Avalon, The Boy with a Torn Hat and The Courtesans of God saga, and multiple anthologies.

43 thoughts on “This takes the cake: A Winner D’Eclaired”

  5. KYLE says:

    Oh Michael…Oh Michael… I can’t keep saying this, can I? It would be anti- climatic. Master Thorn described your writing oh so well! Congrats…Now burn the dress. I toast to you all. Cheers.

    Reply
  7. Tlrelf says:

    Congratulations to the Stanganator!

    Looking forward to seeing you pose with the trophy. Since Thorn said he was on his way to the beach, I wonder if it’s a mermaid, or perhaps a dried kelp and driftwood sculpture or sea glass or a bag of trash he collected while on his walk. . .

    Reply
  8. Michael Stang says:

    What takes me back as much as winning is reading Thorn’s remarks about what sort of writer I am.  I never knew.  No one ever told me how I look when they read my stuff and I got to tell you the lightbulbs flashed with the sense of it.
    It’s like I always say…twenty-nine is the charm, but I was not the originator of such wisdom.  I ripped it off from Clark’s home page.
    Seems there are many reasons to toast the glasses high this evening:  The return of awwyp, back to the air waves that gives us writers a reason to live.  The win.  Thorton Sully.  And the other writers; their rhythm, rhyme, and passion–We get so close in here with our writting, it is only natural some of our souls leak into each other.  I’m gonna skip the mushy-mushy, but I will tell you this, it feels good to be home.

    Reply
  11. Glclark says:

    Stang-a-licious is the only way to describe your writing. Old country boy like me with ‘mind stuck on stupid’ has to read your stories a time or two to squeeze all the juice out of ’em but that’s what makes ’em such a great read. You know, my ol’ mama cows have two bellies and they eat stuff and it goes into their first belly and then they puke it back up and chew on it for a while and  then it goes into the other belly for a while……… Well, that’s how I read your stories. NOT that they make me wanna puke or anything – It’s just that I have to kinda digest ’em and then think about ’em later to get all the good stuff out of ’em. Hell, you outta see Granny after she reads your stuff.  She kinda scratches her skinny fingers thru her ol’ gray hair and says, “What the f*****’s wrong with that boy?” That’s one of my favorite things about your writing – it really pisses Granny off!

    Reply
    • Michael Stang says:

      I got to be dumb or plain crazy to keep pissing off Grany.  Tell her it is not my fault my head is stuck up my, whoops, in the clouds.  I mean with all that regurgitation goin on, and the vacations she takes showing off herself all over the beach at Oceanside, hows she find the time to think about me at all?  Tell her when I finally get to meet her grandkid in person, I will give him my own mason jar wrapped as a gift to bring back .  Tell her to take it easy on that stuff as it has strong tendencies to renew, resurface, obliterate, and transform.  Knowing Granny, I think she will finally know what I mean.

      Reply

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